Report: Anti-Israel Week Clouds Holocaust Day at UC Irvine

Several groups of students at the University of California Irvine held anti-Israel events last week, upstaging Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom Hashoah), the annual memorial of the genocide of 6 million Jews during the Second World War.

This year, Yom Hashoah was held on May 4. Anti-Zionism week was held between May 2 through 5.

advertisement

The anti-Israel events on campus, spearheaded by the Muslim Student Union, Jewish Voice for Peace, Students for Justice in Palestine and the American Indian Student Association, were marked under the title “Anti-Zionism: The Roots of Oppression,” according to UCLA student Shani Shahmoon, writing in the Observer.

Shahmoon writes:

On the UCI campus, several events marked the occasion. Programs denying Israel’s right to exist and condemning Israel over the conflict with the Palestinians were featured. …

Anti-Zionism Week’s activities included a discussion comparing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the dispossession of land from American Indians, as well as a talk by Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss, activist and spokesman for the anti-Zionist Neturei Karta.

“Once again, the anti-Israel students at UC Irvine are attacking Israel and its supporters through extremist voices like Netura Karta, a Jewish group that rejects the existence of the state of Israel and has been excommunicated by similar religious authorities and the greater Jewish community,” explained Roz Rothstein, CEO of the Israel advocacy group, StandWithUs. “It is particularly heinous to ask for the destruction of Israel during Holocaust Remembrance Day, but is a common tactic of these anti-Israel groups to hold events during Jewish holidays and days such as these.”

In response to the alleged anti-Jewish vitriol on UCI’s campus, David Horowitz, founder of the Horowitz Freedom Center, reportedly said, “These people are Jew-haters. It’s disgusting. They hold it deliberately to humiliate Jews. The fact that Irvine is funding them is a disgrace.”

Shahmoon also points out that a non-Jewish student at UCI, Kevin Brum, who was protesting against the anti-Israel activities on campus was accosted by a member of the Black Student Union, who told him he “loved Hitler because he killed white people.”